Written for my Adopt a Mom application, LONG - but it's my story.

[chinaraven]

EDIT: I discovered this evening that not only was I accepted as an Adopt-a-Mom Mentor, but my own Mentor ( nilo  )had nominated me to become a mentor weeks ago. Go figure ;-)

anyhow - what you are reading below this is the breastfeeding story I wrote for my application. If you are expecting or a nursing mom and need a mentor, or have experience and think you could be a mentor, the url is http://adopt_a_mom.livejournal.com and I know they always can use another experienced mom who's willing to make a difference by just being there.

I have two beautiful breast fed babies. One was a challenge and one was a dream.

In that order…

Tessa started out from birth with challenges. We had difficulties in nursing enough, and due to being severely bruised upon birth (she shot out and the resident catching her literally had to “catch” her so she wouldn’t bungee jump by her umbilical cord, leaving her ribs severely bruised and creating a jaundice situation that only compounded.)

Shortly after birth I gained a horrible sinus headache, and the on-call doctor on the maternity ward gave me a prescription of a Sudafed, on a high level. The headache wouldn’t go away and I was taking the Sudafed and Tylenol more often for pain from the headache, than from the pain of giving birth.

My milk floundered in coming in, and I begged for the hospital’s LC… but never got to see one.

Even with my husband standing at the nurses station, requesting that we get seen by an LC as soon as possible - we were never afforded the opportunity. Gaelon stuck with me however, hardly leaving my side until the morning I was to check out so he could make sure the baby seat was set up appropriately to take us both home.


I did not know I could get the hearing and PKU tests scheduled after leaving the hospital, and so she stayed longer than necessary. She was given sugar water and formula against my wishes (only after extending her feeding time from 8 hours since I’d nursed her last), and it was then decided she had severe enough jaundice to justify a Bili-bed and an extra night stay resting on it. I was bullied into agreeing to this when the partner of Tessa’s Pediatrician came in the day we were to check out - during the only time I had been alone in the hospital - and asked me not only if my husband was really my daughter’s father, but if she was at risk for Sickle Cell Anemia. She intimated that her liver was failing.

I was stunned -of course my husband was her father, and had she taken a good look at us? We are both as Northern European as can be (Ok - both of us have Native American heritage, but it goes so far back on each side that I don’t think that it’s anywhere applicable here.) The doctor had the bedside manner of a brick, and by the time she left the room, I’d have done anything to take care of my daughter, and keep her alive and well.

(I later found out that this doctor does this regularly, against her partner's wishes, but as she is more senior in the practice he can do nothing, We then put in a standing notice in her files that the partner was never to have anything to do with any of our children again or there would be a potential of a lawsuit. Further information from Dr. R., the Pediatrician we trusted and loved, revealed that Tessa’s numbers weren’t significant enough to merit an extended stay in the hospital, and that taking her home, crawling into bed and nursing her almost non stop would have done away with the jaundice entirely.)

In the Special Care Nursery, the charge nurse actually yelled at me alternately for pumping too much and not pumping enough, and then the same charge nurse would dump what I pumped down the sink and give Tessa formula in 2 ounce increments every 4 hours. I stayed overnight in a side room eschewing the pull out bed that was so terribly uncomfortable, and sleeping in a rocking chair as I pumped every two hours to get my milk in. I was now 2.75 days post partum, with hospital-induced emotional trauma compounding bit by bit.

A dear friend brought me a copy of a picture of Tessa that I could look at while pumping and held me as I cried. I felt I was a complete failure as a mother, and didn’t understand why I wasn’t able to produce enough milk for my daughter. I sat through the night alone as my husband had finally gone home to get some rest so he could be there for our daughter and myself when we came home the next day.


Finally, on Sunday morning her numbers were down enough that the next partner from her pediatrics practice that was on call opted to release her - not really understanding why the previous pediatrician had actually kept her a day longer. Her liver function was just fine and instead of looking jaundiced, my baby girl now looked sunburned (Insert pic of Tessa with Circles on temples).

We went home and the PPD kicked in immediately without me realizing it. As my husband unloaded the car, I sat on the glider rocker in my own living room, held my precious baby girl and sobbed. I didn’t deserve her. I wasn’t a good enough mother. My husband came in to find me with my face buried in baby as I held her tight and wept into her little receiving blanket.

I sat there like a zombie for what seems like hours, but Tessa was getting hungry, as newborns are want to do, so it couldn’t have been that long. We went into the bedroom where I thought I’d be more comfortable and I tried nursing her. She fought it. I was a nanny for years and I never saw a willful newborn before, but Tessa fought the nursing.

And I felt more and more like a failure.

Eventually we got something of a latch, but Tessa didn't seem to be getting much milk. No wonder - I was still on Sudafed! I had been set up to fail by a system that should have known better, and by my own lack of knowledge. After an hour of her crying, our fighting and a bit of nursing, I caved and broke open the little single-serving packet of formula the hospital had sent home with Tessa. Greedily sucking it down, she took every bit of it and went to sleep.

She was four days old, and I can say in retrospect that I was broken by the hospital. .


I pumped with the manual pump after and we repeated this cycle over and over and over, with her getting a 50/50 mix of breast milk and formula. Meanwhile, I had dreams where I threw my precious baby girl, like a doll, across the room and watched her hit the wall in a very vivid and disturbing splat. Worried about me, my husband took the baby more and more and I pretended everything was fine, but took Reglan with an alarming regularity to help increase my supply.

Four short weeks after having Tessa I went back to work. I remember being engorged, yet unable to get to pump as I couldn’t decline meetings, lest I be fired as I was a consultant, and a very disposable one at that. Throwing my coat about my shoulders I tried to hide the fact that I was now leaking beyond the breast pads and leaving telltale circles on my shirts… Two weeks later my contract was “not renewed effective the end of the week” which was a nice way to not be held liable for firing a nursing mom. The company had provided the facilities for me to pump, but I was not afforded the time to go pump.

I looked about to find a new job and went on unemployment. I have a handicapped husband, and he’s Mr. Mom - so it was on my shoulders to find something new as fast as I could (we couldn’t live on what he could make and could live pretty comfortably on what I do.) I couldn’t find anything local in my field and an opportunity to go to Maine for work came up (I live outside of Hartford CT). The money was in the range we were looking for and my needs for a job to support my family meant that I’d be willing to do just about anything. So we began our weekly commute of 6 hours one way, while I still tried to find something closer to home.

Breastfeeding in public wasn’t easy for me with Tessa. I’d tried, but my husband had hang-ups at the time that left me very un-supported. I was going to take on the world and be able to show everyone that I could do this, and be "Super Crunchy Mom," but in the end it was a concept I was trying to live up to, and I was failing miserably. My poor baby was hungry while we were on the road, and I remember at one point we got off the highway and I was feeding her in a Walmart Family Bathroom somewhere north of Kittery, Maine.

Everything about motherhood with her seemed a struggle, and I recognize now that being on Reglan to help bring in my milk further was only complicating things - I’d had the reaction that many mothers worry about. I’d drank Mothers Milk tea and Pero like mad, taken so much of the herb Fenugreek that I smelled like maple syrup sugar shack, pumped every hour when I wasn’t working, and nothing was bringing things up to a level that would sate my daughter.

I did everything I could, but still felt utterly defeated.

When an opportunity for work came up in Connecticut, I jumped at it. It was 67 miles away from home, but still it was better than driving to Freeport, Maine each Sunday to turn around and drive back on Friday night.

I tendered my resignation and we returned home, and I went to work at my now former employer - a long commute but I was in my own bed, and snuggling my little girl each night....

We still night nursed, and that was so much more convenient than bottles, although there were times she got a bottle at night… but our level of nursing by the time she was 5 months old was now diminished, and she was getting bottled mommy and I was feeling like I had failed her and had felt that I just wasn't meant to be the Mommy she deserved. That PPD monster was certainly there, wasn’t it?

We would settle in for snuggles and weekend long nurse-ins, but the bottle ultimately was her friend. I’d joined mailing lists for breastfeeding moms, was slowly climbing out of my depression on my own, and had accepted that what was going to be, was simply what was going to be.

By 9 months, enough was enough. She wanted my breasts at night to snuggle into, but preferred a little bottle of mommy or formula to the source of the real stuff. And I let go enough to say “I’ve done what I could.” She went on second stage formula and had been eating solid food. Her pediatrician said she was “perfect” and I mothballed my pump.

I still burned with the drive to do better, so I began educating myself. I never wanted to face those feelings of inadequacy again. I was determined that when we had another baby I would not fail him or her… or myself. And so I began devouring books on breastfeeding, scouring the LLL website, and researching until I was blue in the face

Now if you see my little girl, you’ll ask “How the heck can you say you failed anyone?” and in reality that needs to be the prevailing thought. I tried. I did what I could when situations conspired against me, and I got that little girl 6 weeks of mostly mama milk before we really went to formula as a not last ditch scenario. She got Mama milk until she was about 9 months old, and I tried. One day of it is better than no days, and she got 9 months of it. That is a victory in itself.

When she was 18 months old, I had a positive pregnancy test. My mentality had changed though. I decided while the hospital and even I myself had set things up for less than optimal performance for breastfeeding my daughter, I wouldn’t fail this time, and I would set my self up for success.

By this point, I had swung so far into being Pro-Breastfeeding that I was projecting my own feelings of inadequacy onto anyone who’d not desired to breast feed their baby. I got a hold of that feeling as quickly as I could, and again educated my self. I think that I read and re-read “The Womanly Art of Breast Feeding” so many times that I managed to split the spine of my copy.

When my son was born in February of 2007, I was prepared. My Birth Plan had a care sheet attached that I’d worked up with my kids' pediatrician, ensuring that what happened with Tessa would never happen again, and I went into birth with a mentality of no drugs, and nothing to impede the breastfeeding process. I’d talked to my friend Claire and had her advice and support and was dedicated to breastfeeding my son.

And I stuck to it. There were times that I think Claire was amused that I was so obsessed on doing it right, but if you’ve read this far, you can see why I was in that headspace.


When Garret was born he was put to breast immediately, like his sister had been, and I nursed him long, not letting him be taken away for weighing and measuring and any other vital statistics that they wanted his records noted with. No, I let him nurse and gave him back energy for what had been a crazy quick labor compared with his sister’s 17-hour ordeal. The difference between a medicated birth and a non-medicated birth was striking when it came to getting my babies to latch.

After what seemed like an hour or two, but was only an half an hour to forty-five minutes, I let the nurse take him to be cleaned up and sent my husband with her to make sure that our requests for Garret’s care were respected.

They brought him back fast, and I put him back to breast.

Honestly, I don’t think he left there much, as he was on an every-30-minutes-devour-every-drop-he-could-get cycle. I had him at 10:56 at night, and could have gone home the next day, but we had planned on bringing home Tessa the same time - showing her that we’d added on to the family, not replaced her, and I opted to stay one more night to lay in bed and nurse, as well as be right next to him when they gave him his hearing test.

The hearing test was rather revealing. I’d nursed him in the nursery right before they tested his hearing, and they did it while he slept. I got to see where they circumcise babies, and how simple the test, and how much the process my daughter had gone through was overblown by the hospital itself. Going back to the room with him, I puffed the pillows, put on my sling; put him within it, and back he scooted over to the breast, as if to say he didn’t plan on going anywhere else, ever, if he could help it.


We checked out not two full days after he was born, his sister enthralled with him, and begging to hold him, and loving him as if he were hers, and hers only. They came home together that day, and when I crawled into bed with him at home to nurse him, she sat in bed staring at us in wonder, only going down stairs to tell my husband “Daddy, I have a baby upstairs.”

My milk came in with a vengeance - making up for not being there in mass volume when my daughter was a newborn, and likely being helped with the lactation cookies and muffins I’d baked, as well as the pitchers of water and high protein snacks I’d kept next to my bed.

My daughter became very ill right after Garret was born - the whole family did, actually, and she re-discovered the bliss of Mama Milk. (We were struck down by the NoroVirus in of all places the hospital where I gave birth.) So I found myself tandem nursing with a 27 month old and a newborn. Garret’s best friends were my breasts, and he’d curl up around them as if to hold on and claim his space like an explorer making his way up the top of Mt. Everest.

I returned to work when he was 6 weeks old, but was fortunate enough to be able to work from home during his earlier months. There were many meetings I took over the phone with a sleeping babe at my breast, and when he wasn’t nursing I was pumping, as if to make up for the lack of milk I had when my daughter was an infant.



Nursing an infant and a toddler certainly wasn’t without it’s difficulties, but fortunately I was nursing only the infant out in public - which I did with glee, initially nursing him the first day we were out of the hospital at a Ruby Tuesday’s (the staff was so supportive, I can’t tell you how wonderful that was) and not missing a single feeding.
A recent devotee of McDonald’s milk shakes, my toddler was now very willing to give them up if she could nurse and later after I’d started pumping, she hit the freezer stash. In early May she was knocked down by a cold, so we gave her mama milk out of the freezer. It wasn’t long before she’d be seen sliding a small chair over to the freezer in order to get a 4-ounce bag out to be defrosted and placed into her bottle or sippy cup.

Did the Depression Fairy come a visiting again? Yes, and it was bad, but we’re not really sure it was all PPD this time. When I was 7 months along my father unexpectedly passed away, leaving me unable to travel to his funeral cross country, and handling much of the arrangements over the phone, trusting that my younger brother would handle the rest in person.

He did an awesome job, and I snuggled into my bed, holding tight my daughter, and spent as much time while on bedrest as I could learning to do the things I needed to do in order to successfully nurse my baby boy when he was born.


In April, not two months after my son was born, my grandmother passed away, a huge figure in my life. This hit me near as hard as losing my father did. Over Memorial Day, we traveled to scatter my father's ashes in the woods he so loved, and upon our return I discovered two things that knocked me completely off kilter - My company was going to close the Connecticut office and re-organize, which meant I was being laid off. And payroll had taken an entire check and paid it to the IRS.

I had no money at all. I only discovered this when we got off the New York Thruway to get my daughter a refreshment.

My mother fortunately bailed us out, the next paycheck was not handed over to the IRS, and the payroll clerk who’d been a temp was conveniently replaced. I was very thankful that we didn’t have to shell out for either diapers (we cloth diaper) or formula. I was so glad we didn’t have to pay for formula!

Peapod was a godsend - you can buy your groceries online and pay via credit card, and you have enough groceries for a week. Bills were paid online, thanks again to my Mom, and we spent that two weeks stressed beyond belief.

In mid-June, I started getting plugged ducts, and cysts on my breasts. OUCH. Fever hit, fast, and a tell-tale triangle formation as if to point “this way to the nipple” was visible on my right breast.

It was hot out, and my skin wasn’t breathing, and the bra from Motherhood Maternity was making things worse.

After my LLL Leader saw the big red mark, I made a trip to my OB and was soon putting warm compresses on my breast, antibiotic ointment on the skin, and pumping more. I was also blockock feeding my son who’d been giving us frothy green poops again. Yep, he was getting too much foremilk, so block feeding and pumping the other side to relieve pressure was the answer to that problem.

My depression was still with us, and I was crying at the drop of a hat. It all was so heavy, and while my blog showed a sunnier side of me to the world, I was quite depressed.

This depression was a different depression than what I’d had when I was nursing my daughter, though. My GP found ways around treating that without talk therapy and without meds (I took up spinning yarn - let me just say that a spinning wheel may have saved my sanity.) The depression lifted, and I believe breastfeeding was a key component of that.

We introduced solids in Garret's diet at five months, only to be hit with a new frightening issue. His digestive system was not really ready for solid (mushy) food, despite his strong desire to share in what we were having when we ate. In late July he started vomiting after eating, and ended up bring up blood. This precipitated a rush to the emergency room, and he went back to breast milk only. His pediatrician postulated that if he’d been a formula baby he’d have had a very different personality, and would have been rather colicky.

In October of 2007 I started a new job, a wonderful job, at a company that has a Mothers room, in a management position that is a 20 mile drive away from home.  My commute is much shorter, and I get to spend more time with my kids.  That said, despite the pump room, and getting to it a couple of times a day - I re-discovered the "joy's" of pump resistance.  By the end of October my supply had tanked.  Garret was fussy, and we were going through the freezer stash to the point of non existence again.  I ended up on Domperidone, a fact I've not really been public about.  I don't regret it, and it's made the difference in being able to provide for my son or not.  He started to reverse cycle and consumed less during the day - which is a good thing as he does not like the bottle, and never has.  This leads me to be a little less stressed over how much milk I'm producing.

Solid foods were re-introduced at 9 months at his insistence. Child-led-solids was our game plan, and he’s done wonderfully. We only spent a small amount on commercially prepared baby food, and he ate most of what we would eat at each meal these, although when I came home from work he was anxious to get some mommy milk, and the last thing I would do before getting out of bed is nurse him… my days were counted in the time I spend with my kids, and they begin and end with spending time as Mom, not as working woman - although that’s a major part in who I am too..


My son turned one-year-old on Feb 27, 2008. That was yesterday. He has not had a bottle of any milk replacement ever, and only recently was introduced to fruit juice in small amounts. We don’t plan on giving up breast feeding any time soon and the next goal is to get him to two years of breast feeding before we consider tapering off.

Am I a strong advocate for breast feeding? Definitely. Our house has had a couple of nasty virus’ make their way through our systems, but due to breastfeeding Garret has had it easier than the rest of the family. My daughter still nurses several times a week, and while fighting the flu she’s not had much of an appetite, nor has she been able to keep solid food down, but she’s not lost weight and has sustained on breast milk.

I am thankful to the women who guided me through this and helped me when things got difficult as it’s made my children’s life far better than it could have been. What was difficult the first time was much easier the second time.

Should there be a third baby, I will definitely breastfeed, although I expect I may be a lot more laid back about the entire process and likely be a different person about it entirely, with the exception that I believe it’s the very best any mother can do for her child. I now am looking to become a Lactation consultant, and then a Doula, in the distant future. We don’t support our nursing moms enough in this country, and instead of whining about it, it is my intent to help make a positive change by doing something and helping new moms avoid the pitfalls I had when my daughter was a baby.

If you've made it all the way through this - wow. And Thank You.

Aside from writing this for my Adopt a Mom mentor application, I've discovered I needed to write this for me.

My special thanks go to KK for editing this for me. Much love and thanks to you my dear.
*********Updated on March 9, 2010

Garret is now three years old.  A bright sunny and healthy child - who is still nursed.  At 14 months he fell prey to a horrible virus that had his breathing slowing to near existent, and his pediatrician credits nursing with what kept him going. The tests were awful, and I was frightened beyond words.  Being the child he is - he sailed through them with no issue and only was concerned with getting to "dat side" - his term for asking to switch breasts to nurse from.

A three year old doesn't nurse like an infant does - it's mostly comfort, not nutritive, and he will pop on for less than two minutes and then he swaps sides. Then he will fall asleep if it's night time, or if he's fallen or gotten into a tussle with his sister he'll nurse for comfort and then go back to business as usual.
If you'd have asked me long ago about what my thoughts were on extended nursing - I probably would have shot you a look as if to say "are you insane?"  As a mother to do anything else for that sunny little boy would be insane.  His body and mind still need it, although I am thankful that it is not the level it used to be... and we are blessed to have had this time.  All too soon he won't want/need it, but for now - that little bit of time he and I have while nursing is blessed to us.  I can't say enough about the benefits, nor how being mother to he and his sister has changed me as a person.  There's a platitude out there about parenting making you be a better person, but really - Tessa and Garret's presence in my life has done that and led me to new opportunities I could never have imagined.  As I update this, I am planning on starting on my Doula Certification, and am hoping to become a certified as a Hypno-anesthesiologist as well.

If you are a nursing mother, or pregnant and hoping to nurse, I really hope this has been helpful to you.  I fully believe its each child's right to get exactly what they are supposed to get biologically.  As easy a breastfeeding relationship is part of that right.  There may be mitigating circumstances that interfere with that - but that's what mentors, LC's, LLL leaders etc are for.
Reach out to them, and don't be afraid.  We all want the same thing - healthy happy children.

*update again Feb 4 2010...
In the past year I've become a certified doula with Madriella, and started on the path to becoming a midwife, taking classes online and with an aspiring midwife study group. I am also in the process of obtaining my LLL Leader status, but that may be a while... I hope to enroll in the Midwifery College of Utah via their distance education program, and have taken some time off from AAM to study.  I'm now back in a great headspace, and really excited about being an active mentor again after taking a few months off.  I truly look forward to working with you if you are reading this as a new mentee, and I will be available for all your questions you have along the way.

Oh yes, and Garret does still nurse once in a blue moon... mostly when he's utterly exhausted and has no idea he's scooted to do so at night when he's crawled in bed with me, or when he's fallen and gotten a significant hurt.  There are healing properties to breast milk which include pain relief.  I don't see him doing it much longer, but every drop has helped him become a very healthy child with little problem along the way.